Chinese chip tool maker AMEC sues US defence department over ‘military company’ designation
- The US defence department had designated AMEC as a Chinese military company in 2021, but removed it from the list later that year, the company said
Chinese chip equipment maker Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) has filed a lawsuit against the US defence department (DOD) over suggestions it is tied to the Chinese military, demanding that it be removed from a blacklist that has damaged its business.
Shanghai-based AMEC, a maker of etching systems used by semiconductor foundries, said the DOD’s move of designating it as a “Chinese Military Company (CMC)” at the start of the year was made without legal basis and had caused it “serious and irreparable” harm, according to a complaint filed to the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday.
In January, the US DOD added a number of Chinese companies, including AMEC, to its CMC list, which names firms it identifies as a threat to US national security and bars them from doing business with some American firms.
In response to AMEC’s request for additional information, the DOD “provided a single basis” for adding it to the blacklist, which was an award the company received in 2019 from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, AMEC said in the lawsuit.
“We are deeply shocked by the designation of AMEC again on the military-related list by the DOD. Such designation was wrong and groundless,” AMEC’s chairman and CEO Gerald Yin Zhiyao said in a statement posted on Chinese social media platform WeChat on Friday.